Thirty-three years ago
this past June, Michael Davies submitted his first article for
publication in these columns. I was five years old at the time. I
don’t remember when he wasn’t a vital part of The Remnant family.
For well over three decades his “Letter from London” came in month
after month and year after year, keeping thousands of post-Vatican
II Catholics informed and encouraged during three of the most
turbulent decades in the history of the Church.

After waging a two-year battle against cancer,
Michael Davies, who was born in 1936, suffered a massive heart
attack and died in his home on September 25, 2004. His final “Letter
from London” appeared in the September 30th Remnant. That the great
man is no longer with us means, among other sad things, that we no
longer have the shoulders of a giant on which to stand to peer over
the treetops of a perilous post-conciliar forest. With our London
correspondent having gone on ahead, we are on our own and, truly, it
seems awfully dark down here in the trees without him!

Remembering a Great Man

Over the decades since the close of Vatican II, Michael Davies
literally gave his life to the Traditional Catholic
counterrevolution. In fact, I wonder if the cancer that consumed his
body and the disease that finally stilled his generous heart,
weren’t in some measure brought on by a grueling writing and
speaking schedule that would have severely taxed a man half his age.

We’ll never know, but what we can be sure of is
that he emptied himself completely in service of the Church, and he
died in the saddle with his boots on. We also know that he labored
for a pittance from the beginning, having consistently refused to
accept a regular stipend for his column.

This was hardly out of the ordinary for Michael
Davies. In fact, his entire body of work—including twenty full
length books, dozens of pamphlets, hundreds of articles, and
countless lectures—was, for the most part, a labor of love…love for
the Church to which he’d converted, and love for the cause of
Tradition that he’d made his own.

He sought neither money nor fame for his
Herculean efforts to defend the Bride of Christ. Like the noble
knight that he was, he placed his sword—that most able
pen—faithfully in Her service until the very end. For him, the
battle for Tradition had nothing to do with temporal reward.

First and foremost, at least in his mind, Michael Davies was a grade
school teacher. Teaching was his first love and that remained his
identity even years after he’d retired from it in 1992. In fact, his
last “Letter from London” included proud remembrances of his beloved
students—the little girls and boys who long ago had called him,
simply, Sir.

In a day and age when credentials and degrees and
inflated titles define us more than virtue does, it says so much
about Michael Davies that he wished the world to know, simply, that
he was a teacher of children.

When I was ten years
old I met him for the first time. The memory of that meeting is a
bit hazy, of course, but I recall thinking that Welshmen sure “talk
funny.” But, he not only talked funny, he was funny—hilariously so.

Imagine our surprise as children when we learned
that the “serious Englishman” (a dual inaccuracy at which he, being
Welsh and merely raised in England, would twice wince) whom we knew
only through the solemn accolades expressed by the adults in our
lives was, in fact, one of the most entertaining men we’d ever met.

Even a child could see that Michael Davies was a
man who didn’t take himself nearly as seriously as those around him
did. His self-deprecating humor, in fact, would become one of his
most endearing characteristics. Later on, it became a source of
amusement to see him flat out refuse to take fans and critics alike
as seriously as they took themselves, or, for that matter, as
seriously as they took him.

Especially here in America, his British wit
became nearly as celebrated as his unsurpassed scholarship. Whenever
he was approached by an admirer who announced that he’d read one or
the other of his books, Michael’s pat response always went something
like this: “You didn’t! Goodness me, not the whole thing? You must
have found it dreadfully boring.”

Praise embarrassed him almost as much as flattery
made him visibly nervous. Invariably, he’d use his sense of humor to
deflect both.

I don’t know what it was exactly
(perhaps gallows humor) but pioneer traditionalists all understood
the essential value of humor—my father, Dr. Bill Mara, Hamish
Fraser, Father Miceli, Father Urban Snyder, John Senior, even
Archbishop Lefebvre himself, and, of course, Michael Davies.

I can remember as a child lying under the piano
bench (my favorite “hide out” in those years) in the family living
room and listening to them make one sobering observation after
another concerning the desperate state of the Church in the
immediate aftermath of the Council, and then move seamlessly on to
some droll commentary on Bugnini, Montini, Casaroli, Weakland or
Hunthausen, which inevitably left everyone in the room in stitches.

What fascinating men they were! Children could
hardly help but to adore them. For us, they were giants who lived in
faraway lands and spent every waking moment dueling with the enemies
of the Church.

They brought Campion and Fisher and More to life
before our eyes. They were on fire with love for the Catholic
Church, but, and what some tend to forget, they were all so very
human—they loved life and knew how to laugh, especially at
themselves.

This was true of all of them, but especially
Michael Davies. As a child, I practically worshipped him; as an
adult and despite occasional disagreements, I respected him more
than any other man, save my own father; and now in death I mourn him
as I’ve never mourned anyone since my father.

What I keep thinking about now that he’s gone is
how much less interesting the world will be without Michael Davies.
He was, after all, a sort of man for all seasons in his own right.
An accomplished linguist (he spoke several languages fluently), he
also loved football and dogs and rugby and movies; he had a
fascinating appreciation for history, wars, kings and generals.

And he never met an underdog he didn’t like. He
knew more about the War Between the States, for example, than most
Americans. I can remember walking along to Chartres one year and
listening as he expertly distracted the pilgrims from their pain and
exhaustion by explaining why General Robert E. Lee (whom he admired)
had lost at Gettysburg— this to the delight of the young pilgrims
especially, who learned more about the Civil War that afternoon than
they had in years of history classes.

Like most
combat soldiers, Michael very rarely spoke of his own military
experiences in the Somerset Light Infantry (where he’d fought in the
Malayan emergency, the Suez Crisis, and the campaign in Cyprus),
apart from admitting that his years in uniform were his happiest.

But he never tired of talking about the exploits
of other soldiers, especially famous dead ones…and, sometimes, not
so famous ones. There was one story that he liked to tell: One dark
night during the War, a German airman suddenly showed up at the back
door of his mother’s kitchen, having parachuted quite by accident
into her garden. “Being British, what do you suppose my mother did?”
Michael would ask with that inimitable twinkle in his eye. “She
invited the man in for a cup of tea and then phoned the police and
asked them to come ‘round and pack him up.”

In appreciation for the tea, the airman had given
little Michael one of his battle medals which, to Michael’s great
chagrin, the police “confiscated” when they did finally “come
‘round.”

He loved war songs and would delight in
reciting poems from memory about gallant heroes and famous battles,
his favorite being Henry V’s speech before the Battle of Agincourt
(on St. Crispin’s Day).

If you wanted to know how many French vs. English
died in that battle, you only needed to ask. The exact dates and
figures were all right there in that keen mind, but he would reel
them off in such a way that no one could mistake his purpose: He was
genuinely amazed by the lopsided statistics of the famous battle and
just naturally assumed that his friends would want to know them.

He didn’t know how to brag, and so he shared his
wealth of such knowledge like a child might, with a kind of simple
wonder that made everyone listening feel like something new had just
then been discovered. Though few could keep up with him
intellectually, he made sure that no one ever felt inadequate around
him or because of him. Thus, bus drivers, waiters, cabbies and bar
tenders were treated like kings. Michael Davies, the Lion of
Traditionalism, was an incredibly sensitive man who appreciated very
much the little things in life.

I can remember watching the changing of the guard
with him at Buckingham Palace in London one year. He asked us if we
didn’t agree that the British bearskin hats were “ever so smart
looking”. Moments later we had the whole history of the tall, black
hats which the British had evidently stolen from the French who had
used them to make their armies look taller and more fearsome.

Fascinating stuff, to be sure; but what was
amazing about the man was the incredible scope of his knowledge and
the ready ease with which he could recall both profound and quirky
aspects of it.

One minute it might be bearskin hats; the next,
von Hildebrand’s daring escapes from the Nazis; and then Archbishop
Lefebvre’s thought process in June, 1988. And, yet, being a huge fan
of Bugs Bunny and Lieutenant Columbo, Michael could also wax quite
rhapsodic about slightly less pressing matters. He had an uncanny
way of communicating with 10-year-olds and intellectuals with equal
ease and effectiveness. I found that to be fascinating, especially
when I was ten.

Whether the topic was Victor and Veronica Viper
hissing in Mrs. Potts’ pit, or the nuances of the rules of rugby, or
Peter Pan vs. Winnie the Pooh, or single malt Scotch vs. blended, or
the suppression of the Jesuits, or Pope Paul’s liturgical
abomination—Michael Davies was in his element. He also possessed
that great gift whereby he could connect to his intellectual
inferiors in a way that left them convinced he was utterly unaware
of any disparity between them. Michael Davies—the great Hammer of
the Modernists—was a model of charity.

Since his
passing, bittersweet images keep popping up in my mind. Here he’s
walking along the muddy roads to Chartres, his Welsh flag in one
hand and his rosary in the other; there he’s inside Thomas More’s
actual prison cell, chatting with the Captain of the Guard at the
Tower of London; teaching some young men in Spain the authentic
words to Annie Laurie; exploring the Chapel of the Martyrs deep in
the woods of the Vendee; cheering on Wales in a televised rugby
match in some pub in the South of France; standing beneath
Michelangelo’s dome beside the tomb of St. Pius X; arranging a
Tridentine Mass inside Canterbury Cathedral for the first time since
the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I; praying the rosary in Fatima;
entering the miraculous waters in Lourdes; kneeling in prayer at
John Fisher’s cathedral in Rochester; “supporting the Monks” in a
café in Monaco; meditating before the statue of the Infant in the
city of Prague— and a hundred other Catholic moments, at the center
of which is a rather ordinary-looking Welshman in a Jack Daniels
sweatshirt or a Pittsburgh Steelers cap.

In these
rapidly fading recollections from years gone by, I see Michael
Davies teaching…constantly teaching. During the time spent with him
in Europe over the past thirteen springs, I often noticed that it
was the American children and students in our tour groups to whom he
devoted most of his time. That’s the way he was. The world for him
was a classroom with something to learn and something to teach
around every turn in the road. I think he would rather have spent
hours with a troubled fifteen-year-old than minutes with an admirer
who’d read all his books and wanted to “talk shop”.

Michael Davies was a natural-born teacher who
possessed that unique quality that instructs without condescending,
that enlightens without intimidating, and that could impart wisdom
in the brief time it takes to raise a glass in a toast. I wasn’t his
peer…few men were; but I was his student.

Conclusion

A few hours after I’d heard the sad news of the passing of the great
man, I wrote the following on The Remnant’s web site:

Though he was not martyred, the name
Davies can surely and without hesitation be placed alongside
those of More, Fisher and Campion, as men who gave their lives
to the defense of the Holy, Roman Catholic Church in times of
unparalleled attack.

With all my heart I believe this to be true and
am convinced that history will concur. In terms of sheer positive
impact on souls languishing in a revolution-wracked Church, I can
think of no layman who served more loyally or confirmed the brethren
more steadfastly. He knew history and he understood the perils of
our own time in the context of history.

He also knew that we are presently engaged in a
pitched battle against forces of darkness, against which, humanly
speaking, we are no match since the Catholic Church has fallen. He
knew well that, under such circumstances, even the strongest faith
will wither if hope is lost.

And so his tireless task was to keep Hope alive,
convinced that a childlike confidence in a good God is the best
antidote for the poisons of despair, ambition, presumption and pride
that hell has injected into the bloodstream of the modern world.

Like Newman and Chesterton before him, Michael
Davies chose this Faith…he wasn’t born into it. And after making
that choice, he, like them, dedicated his life to the unflagging
defense of its every doctrine and dogma, tenet and creed, rubric and
sacred prayer. And this is what we’d do well to always remember
about him—he chose to be a traditional Catholic and would have died
for that choice.

The former Anglican knew well that Roman
Catholics possess the pearl of great price; ours was the religion
that successfully carried saints and kings, gentlemen and scholars,
soldiers and peasants through this vale of tears for two thousand
years since Christ walked with men. We, then, are the fortunate
ones…and neither fabricated liturgies nor cockamamie Councils can
change that triumphant reality. We have no excuse to abandon Hope!

And so, as Michael always sought to be useful, let’s put his memory
to good use. Let’s remember him happily as the mighty lion of
Tradition, the jovial son of Wales, the great Catholic who inspired
tears of love and tears of laughter, who helped us believe in the
only things that really matter, and who kept hope burning bright
even in the darkest night. In the end, he showed us how to finish
this race, fight the good fight, and keep the old Faith.

With fond remembrance and gladness at having
known him and called him friend, we bid adieu and Godspeed to
Michael Davies, one of the greatest Defenders of the Faith who ever
lived.

Cheers, Sir. Thanks for everything! And, don’t
worry—we’ll not forget what you’ve done for us and for our children.
As Harry the King might have said, your story shall the good man
teach his son. And Tradition shall ne'er go by from this day to the
ending of the world.

Eternal rest
grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed rest in
peace, Amen.

An Afterword
In Defense

Even in the few days that
have elapsed since his passing, I’ve already seen a variety of
published attacks on the memory of Michael Davies, one individual
even having had the remarkably bad taste to refer to him as a member
of the “unfaithful departed”.

The facts are these: No layman writing in any
language did more to alert Catholics to the severity of the post-conciliar
debacle and to the necessity of resisting Vatican II’s ecumenism and
disastrous “renewal”; his trilogy (Pope John’s Council, Pope Paul’s
New Mass, and Cranmer’s Godly Order) was the vehicle for the return
to traditional Catholicism of thousands of laymen, hundreds of
priests and even a bishop or two.

The pontificates of the post-conciliar popes were
for him a source of profound sadness and deepest regret. He believed
and he wrote and he said that the new theology, the new liturgy and
the new ecumenism were razing the human element of the Catholic
Church to the ground—a stark reality which prompted him to adamantly
oppose the “conservative” Catholicism which irrationally defended
the Council’s regime of novelty for more than thirty years!

True, he didn’t make it his habit to join in reckless bellowing of
rash judgments and dangerous opinions that could easily lead to
scandal or to simple Catholics questioning the indefectibility of
the Church. He also had a keen sense of the awesome responsibility a
Catholic writer must live up to, especially one who dares to use his
pen to question the successors of the Apostles. For the good of
souls, Michael tended to understate rather than overstate. But this
was no crime. This was the stock and trade of a British scholar and
polemicist!

How shocking it is, then, to see American
“traditionalists”—men and women who owe Michael Davies so
much—actually disparaging the memory of the great defender of
Archbishop Lefebvre, the layman who wrote the book on the problems
with Pope Paul’s Mass, and the columnist who held up the mastheads
of the Angelus and The Remnant through decades of revolution. While
Michael himself would have been the last to take note of such
boorish behavior (let alone defend himself against it), I believe
it’s incumbent upon those who knew him best to put a few words down
in his defense for posterity’s sake.

Remnant readers will recall that Michael Davies and I had our
differences of opinion over the years (the fact that he tolerated
any objections whatsoever raised by an editor half his age whom he’d
first encountered tagging after “mummy”, should speak to the
humility of the man).

I have no desire to tinker with any aspect of his
long association with The Remnant, including those instances when we
didn’t see eye-to-eye. I make no secret of the fact, for example,
that I questioned (and still question) Michael’s dogged defense of
Cardinal Ratzinger.

Over the years and to Michael’s dismay, I
published criticisms of some of the Cardinal’s more perplexing
statements. But I can also assure the reader that there was much
more to that story. As someone who took issue with him on this very
point, I hasten to set the record straight—Michael Davies, through
it all, had only the best interest of traditional Catholics at
heart.

And here’s what I mean: He firmly believed (and
had been assured on numerous occasions) that Cardinal Ratzinger is
“on our side” and would do all in his power, short of touching off a
schism in Rome, to gradually turn things in Tradition’s favor. All
His Eminence required of us was patience and time.

Some of us were (and are) skeptical. But, as Michael saw it, the
Cardinal had demonstrated enough good will on our behalf to justify
our giving him the benefit of the doubt, i.e., the Cardinal’s
foreword to Msgr. Gamber’s book; the Cardinal’s historic
rehabilitation of Pat Morely and the Honolulu Six who had been
placed under interdict for “formal adherence” to the SSPX; the
Cardinal’s public celebration of the Tridentine Mass on occasion;
the Cardinal’s willingness to meet personally with traditionalists,
etc.

Whether we can bring ourselves to accept the
Cardinal’s assurances that he is “on our side” is not at issue. What
is at issue is that Michael believed that the Cardinal believed he
was our ally. His great “sin”, then, was to take his friend, the
Cardinal, at his word; but this was very much the British thing to
do.

There was no conspiracy or dark and dastardly
plotting going on behind the scenes. Michael simply believed, based
on private meetings with His Eminence (to which none of us was
privy, by the way), that the Cardinal would prove an invaluable ally
to us all. What of it? Wouldn’t it be grand!

In
the grand scheme of things as well as in the light of eternity, this
can hardly be deemed an unforgivable offense. And, after all Michael
Davies did for his fellow Catholics and the restoration of the old
Mass throughout the world, it is absurd to suggest that his loyalty
to the Cardinal could in any way undermine his place in history as
the great defender of Tradition during the aftermath of Vatican II.

And, besides, who among us would balk at the
prospect of facing the Divine Judge knowing that the most serious
charge that could be leveled against us in life was that we had
harbored an inordinate loyalty to the head of the Holy Office?

Furthermore, to anyone who was paying attention,
it was obvious that Michael Davies had a “back-up plan”. Never once
did he cease writing for the most “radical rag” in all of
Traditionalism—The Remnant—even after we’d published “We Resist You
the Face”, which Michael suggested I send to every bishop in the
United States.

Year after year, he very publicly joined The
Remnant chapter on the road to Chartres, even acting as guide for
Remnant tours in Europe. He spoke at every Remnant Forum ever
convened. And when it became clear that he didn’t have long to live,
it was here to St. Paul—to The Remnant—that he traveled (at his
suggestion) in order to bid farewell to his many American friends.
It was on that same historic evening, in fact, that he expressed his
firm conviction that Archbishop Lefebvre would one day be
canonized—an electrifying moment that brought down the house in a
thunderous standing ovation.

Michael Davies’ loyal
stand with The Remnant infuriated those centrists who preach a
“reasonable” and “balanced” traditionalism (based primarily on
liturgical “preferences”) and who believed that his alliance with
such dangerous “extremists” as us was detrimental to
Una Voce’s prestige here and
abroad.

But he paid little attention to this. Instead, he
labored to strike a balance that he hoped would, in the long run,
benefit the greatest number of abandoned traditional Catholics and
their children. He worked diligently in the present but never took
his eye off the future.

To the further consternation of his “reasonable”
friends, he consistently supported the Society of St. Pius X,
insisting publicly that attendance at SSPX Masses was permissible
and that the SSPX could not be considered schismatic.

He maintained close relations with many if not
most of the priests of the SSPX. And, back in January of 2004, I
myself drove him from St. Paul to Winona (a grueling trip for a man
in his condition) so that he could deliver two unforgettable
lectures to the priests and seminarians of St. Thomas Aquinas
Seminary.

One of Michael’s last published letters was to
Father Patrick Perez in which he encouraged Catholics in California
to attend the Tridentine Mass at the traditionalist independent
chapel of Our Lady Help of Christians, and to have nothing more to
do with the Latin Novus Ordo at St. Mary’s By the Sea.

How do you suppose that one went over in Rome?
Probably about as well as this did from Michael’s Liturgical Time
Bombs in Vatican II in 2002:

In the Conciliar
Church today there is one, and just one, absolute, and this is,
to repeat the words of Pope John Paul II, that the little seed
planted by Pope John XXIII has become “a tree which has spread
its majestic and mighty branches over the vineyard of the Lord”,
and that “it has given us many fruits in these 35 years of life,
and it will give us many more in the years to come.” I cannot
imagine any bishop in the world, no matter how orthodox in his
personal belief, no matter how generous to traditional Catholics
in authorising the Missal of St. Pius V, who would have the
courage to dissent from the insistence of Cardinal Basil Hume
that there must be no turning back from the policies they had
adopted to implement the Council. We are witnessing not the
renewal but the “accelerated decomposition of Catholicism”, our
bishops, beginning with the bishop of Rome, insist that we are
basking in the fruits of a new Pentecost.

Michael maintained good relations with the
Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of the Christ the King and
the other approved priestly orders. He believed in at least trying,
again, for the sake of the souls of the faithful, to bring
traditionalists closer together in order to help each other weather
this post-conciliar storm.

And yet, lest anyone mistake that effort for the
swapping of principle for a tenuous unity, let us remember that
Michael Davies, to the bitter end, remained a fierce critic of the
New Mass, which he refused to attend and which he considered an
abomination; he lambasted Vatican II for the reign of terror that it
had imposed on the Church; and he frequently stated in public that,
thanks to Vatican II, the New Mass and the disastrous current
pontificate, the Church today is well beyond crisis and, humanly
speaking, well beyond hope…

Little things? Yes, if your only forum is some
lame website in cyberspace. But for a high-profile traditional
Catholic, the president of an international federation, a renowned
international author, and one who was regularly granted private
audiences with some of the highest ranking prelates in the Church
(despite his Remnant by-line)—those “little things” spoke volumes.

Michael Davies was a man who demonstrated that leadership involves
knowing when to advance as well as when to hold the ground. And hold
his ground he did, even while extremist traditionalists rushed past
him, leering at him and mocking his “centrism”, just before they
overran the front line and rushed straight off the battlefield into
the fever swamps of irrelevancy—precisely where the Modernist
revolutionaries wanted all Traditional Catholics to wind up… out of
the Church and well out of their way.

Neo-Catholics, envious of his accomplishments in favor of a cause
they’d declared “dead and buried” decades ago, will no doubt try to
turn Michael Davies against the movement he championed; the tiny
fringe of fever-swamp traditionalists will try to condemn him for
failing to come down with the fever and start his own church or
crown himself pope; but the vast majority of Traditional Catholics
know exactly where he stood and what he did for the Church and for
hundreds of thousands of souls.

These little jabs by little men will be forgotten
soon enough. History knows the truth about Michael Davies, and so do
we. And we will not forget.

End Note

Any one who is fortunate
enough to be worshipping regularly at the Tridentine Mass these days
may see fit to consider that, were it not for the groundwork of
Michael Davies, there may not be many such Masses left to attend
anywhere in the world.

Would it not be right and fitting, then, for each
of us to vow here and now to have one such Mass offered for the
repose of his soul? I can think of no more fitting way to repay the
debt we owe the man who spent thirty-five years teaching us about
the “most beautiful thing this side of heaven” and showing us all
how to keep ourselves and our children on the narrow path that leads
to everlasting life…despite the Revolution of Vatican II.